There have been a few chapters posted since my last update on Fury. I'll try to update here each time we post a new chapter, but I wanted to make sure you saw this one. It's one of the best.

(17 photos) WARNING - Some of the photos in this post are very graphic. If you would rather not see the Antarctic Food Chain in action we suggest you skip this post.

Excerpt: "As we waited, we watched the penguins on the shore. A big survival mechanism most penguins share is to approach the water in a group and jump in together, to provide a more confusing target for predators, and to not be isolated. We watched a group of about ten gentoo penguins approach the water's edge, hovering on the brink, nobody wanting to be first because of the possibility that they'll be the only one to jump. After several false starts by the ones on the edge, a few dive in at once, and several more quickly follow..."

Click on over to Antarctic Fox to see the rest!

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In his 'Little Green Book', poker great Phil Gordon outlines a basic principle of poker play: At each turn to act, ask yourself: "Can I fold this? Can I fold this? Can I fold this?" If the answer is yes, then fold. If not, then ask "Can I raise this? Can I raise this? Can I raise this?" If the answer is yes, then raise. If the answer is no to both questions, then and only then should you call.

To a reasonable degree, I adhere to the same philosophy when iterating on a design. First, for each functional or aesthetic element, ask "Can I cut this? Can I cut this? Can I cut this?" and if you can, if the functionality isn't vital on the main page (or sometimes, at all), then cut, cut, cut. If you can't, then ask "Can I improve this? Can I improve this? Can I improve this?" If you can (and 'improve' here takes a meaning more nuanced than 'add to' or 'make more complex') then do it. If you can't cut it and you can't improve it, then leave it alone for this iteration and move to the next bit.

Cutting is really hard, and often inspires users to pen 'if you don't put it back then I'm leaving you' ultimatums, but be liberal in cutting within the privacy of your own development box and then step back and look at the whole canvas. Cutting one thing may make you miss the thing, but cutting several things can give you a whole new design that's worth getting to know.

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Rachel and I have posted three more Antarctica chapters in the last few days over at Antarctic Fox. If you like the images below then you should click through to the rest!

I'll be posting updates here periodically, but if you're interested in finding out about Antarctica updates as they come out, I encourage you to visit the Antarctic Fox feed, where you can add it to your iGoogle page or feed reader, or subscribe to email notifications.

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We were given the amazing opportunity to join ten of our family and friends and go on a twelve day private expedition cruise in the Antarctic Peninsula on the Hanse Explorer. Over the course of the adventure Rachel and I took over 16,000 photos while having some of the most amazing and unexpected experiences of our lives. Click through to see the pictures

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Today I voted at Nimitz Elementary School. As I waited for Rachel to vote I admired the library, computer room, and auditorium as kids in the next room rehearsed singing 'This Land is Your Land'.

Mounted discretely on the wall, without any significant fanfare or attention, was a letter from Admiral Nimitz that he wrote to the students of this school upon its opening 50 years ago. Reading the letter I was warmed and surprised by its relevance, both for this particular time and place, and for this era in general. Since the letter probably won't be noticed by anyone else at the polling place today, I thought it was worth highlighting here.

16 May 1958

Dear Sixth Graders of Chester W. Nimitz School:

On the eve of your graduation I send you greetings, congratulations and best wishes for happiness and success in the next step in your education.

A basic responsibility of all American citizens is the safeguarding of the freedoms won by the founders of our country.

These freedoms - which all of us enjoy today - can be threatened in time of peace as well as in war.

Alert and intelligent participation in civic affairs when you are grown is your best means of safe guarding your rights in time of peace.

Your schools are the best means of preparing you to meet your responsibilities.

Chester W. Nimitz
Fleet Admiral

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I'm mostly posting this so that it will forever be a high result should someone Google 'Alphatronix', 'ATX', 'Inspire' or 5.25 MO Magneto-optical.

Way back when I used to work as an intern at MacWEEK (1993) I reviewed a few 5.25" magneto-optical drives. Since, at the time, they were the most permanent, safest way to archive data, I used one to burn an archive of my files from 1993. Now, 15 years later, I'm trying to get that data back to consolidate my backups, and I'm realizing that the physical integrity of a backup isn't any good if the mechanism for reading the data is obsolete and nowhere to be found.

I'm hoping that someone out there still has one of these that I could either borrow for a day or buy for a song. I'd also be happy with bringing the disk to you if you're local and already have it set up (god only knows where I'd find the needed drivers...) I have two Pinnacle Micro 5.25" MO cartridges that are still new in their shrinkwrap that I'd be happy to give in trade for a loan.

Drop me a line at kevinatfurydotcom if you've got a lead for me, and hi from either the present or the distant past!

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When Apple releases a product, you know it's released. You know its features, you know its character, you know its story, because Steve Jobs told it to you. You know whether you want it and you know how you feel about it even if it will be weeks before you actually see or touch one.

On the other side of the world is virtually every other cellphone manufacturer on the planet. When HTC or Blackberry comes out with a new phone, first you find out about it from a leaked powerpoint slide of their product roadmap which gives both a skeleton view of the device's functionality, but also tells you what product will render it obsolete, how, and in which quarter.

Next you get the sketches and exploded diagrams from the FCC certification reports, and possibly a few fuzzy photos (often photoshopped) from people purporting to have held an actual unit. You might get a leaked product brief from a carrier to its salespeople or a product page that was mistakenly put live on the web for a few hours until someone got a frantic call that it made Engadget Mobile.

Eventually the launch day rolls around, unceremoniously and only given attention when a gadget site snags a promo shot and details the minor differences between their predictions for the product and the actual shipping unit. The determination between 'publicly announced', 'ready for ordering' and 'now shipping' is usually fuzzy and not given much importance.

Eventually someone posts an anticlimactic unboxing video which nobody cares about because someone just posted a leaked product shot of the [model number]+10 edition coming out 'before the holidays/summer/semester/tradeshow'.

This slow leak of information means that it never has the power to get anywhere further than the mobile phone and gadget fan blogs. You, gentle reader, might know what the BlackBerry Bold is, but does your spouse/SO/child? There's no excitement about a launch day or a big dump of information. There's absolutely no narrative that can be used to build desire for a product, or give you a cheat sheet on how to pitch to your spouse/SO/parent why you need this thing and it's not just another frivolous purchase.

The first Android phone (HTC Dream) is likely going to come out next month (if the blurry videos and FCC sketches are to be believed) and the only narrative to follow is how the public SDK is still at version 0.9, and several cool features were just removed from it. The public is forming a narrative based on the plot points they're given and right now it's all about the SDK, the least sexy part of the product to people who aren't engineers and software developers.

I hope the Android folks aren't hoping that a slick UI and great user experience will sell itself, because phones ain't the web. The cognitive and financial switching costs for mobile phones are greater than for almost any other device you can buy. Helio and Sidekick are two great examples of how slick mobile products can fail to gain traction because they rely on carriers and customers to generate demand. Take a page from the Book of Jobs and tell the story to the people. Tell them why they want it. Show it to them. Educate them so well that they can proselytize another person to buy a product that neither of them has ever seen in the flesh.

In short: Don't let people who don't have your best interests at heart tell your story to your customers.

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"It gives you a good feeling, a feeling of power, of superiority, to have outlasted another old friend. But you can't do it too soon, you can't come running home from the funeral and get the book out -- you can't do that. You have to let a little time go by. I have a rule of thumb: six weeks. If you're a friend of mine, and you're in my book and you die, I leave you alone for an extra six weeks. Six extra weeks in the book, on the house, it's on me. But after that, 'hey, facts are facts—fuck you, you're dead! Out you fucking go!'"

-- George Carlin, It's Bad for Ya! (2008)

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I hope I'm not being punk'd. :-)

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This morning John Gruber wrote a nice article on whether or not to upgrade to a 3G iPhone. I found it interesting that while I'm going to upgrade, it's not primarily for any of the reasons he mentions.

While 3G, a new design, and GPS are great to have, they're not enough to get me to upgrade the iPhone I waited in line for on day one, but I'm getting one anyway, for far more boring reasons: the flush headphone jack and 16 gigs.

Sure there's currently an iPhone out there with 16 gigs, but it wasn't available when I bought mine, and a memory boost alone wasn't worth buying a new phone. I currently have a good selection of music and two or three movies on my iPhone, but space is always tight, and I never seem to have the thing I didn't know I'd want when I last loaded it up. Double the space gives me room for a lot more variety, especially when I'll be able to bring along six favorite movies instead of three.

But as petty as it sounds, a flush headphone jack is pretty important. I don't carry headphones around with me, but there's usually a pair wherever I go. Though I have a Shure headphone adapter I don't carry it around with me everywhere like a band-aid waiting for a boo-boo. As a result I don't use the iPhone's iPod functionality a third as much as I'd like to, and often time when I do, the experience consists of me trying to find a quiet place, then cupping my hand around the iPhone speaker to bounce more of its weak volume toward my ears.

Throw in a faster internet experience and the apps that are going to be making a lot of entertaining use of the GPS and I'm sold, carrying only a little disappointment that it feels more like a 'fix' than an 'upgrade'.

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1. Place two yellow post-its on my headphones that say "We'll be right back!"
2. Feel the familiar twinge of remorse for having devoted a year of my life writing software for the Newton
3. Finish all conversations of longer than 5 minutes with "One more thing..."
4. Convince myself that plastic is the new brushed aluminum
5. Buy whatever shiny new thing Apple deigns to sell to me

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1. Wear a black turtleneck
2. Camp out overnight at the Apple Store (like last time)
3. Laugh at people who can't upgrade to iPhone OS 2.0 because they hacked their iPhones
4. Attend WWDC and convince myself that I'll write a product that would win an Apple Design Award
5. Make paper mockups of the new iPhone sizes to compare with my antiquated iPhone

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So after a hiatus of a few months while focusing on disseminating content through other means (mostly FriendFeed), it's time to get back to blogging. Yesterday's interview on Google Blogoscoped got me thinking that I do have a lot of stuff to share, and it's high time I bring the Fury back. :-)

This post will also make my RSS feed non-empty, so people won't have trouble subscribing to int anymore.

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Today I was flattered to see Robert Scoble decide to simultaneously switch to and join two different sites I've done design work for, Gmail and FriendFeed. Aww shucks, Robert!

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